Hayek: A Collaborative Biography: Part III, Fraud, Fascism and Free Market Religion PDF
Preview Hayek: A Collaborative Biography: Part III, Fraud, Fascism and Free Market Religion
Hayek: A Collaborative Biography Archival Insights into the Evolution of Economics Series Editor: Robert Leeson This series provides a systematic archival examination of the process by which economics is constructed and disseminated. All the major schools of economics will be subject to critical scrutiny; a concluding volume will attempt to synthe- sise the insights into a unifying general theory of knowledge construction and influence. Titles include: Robert Leeson ( editor ) THE KEYNESIAN TRADITION Robert Leeson ( editor ) THE ANTI-KEYNESIAN TRADITION Robert Leeson ( editor ) AMERICAN POWER AND POLICY Roger Frantz and Robert Leeson ( editors ) HAYEK AND BEHAVIORAL ECONOMICS Robert Leeson ( editor ) HAYEK: A COLLABORATIVE BIOGRAPHY PART I Robert Leeson ( editor ) HAYEK: A COLLABORATIVE BIOGRAPHY PART II Robert Leeson ( editor ) HAYEK: A COLLABORATIVE BIOGRAPHY PART III Forthcoming titles: Robert Leeson ( editor ) HAYEK: A COLLABORATIVE BIOGRAPHY PART IV Robert Leeson ( editor ) HAYEK AND THE AUSTRIAN SCHOOL Archival Insights into the Evolution of Economics Series Standing Order ISBN: 978–1–4039–9520–9 (Hardback) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the titles of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Service Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England Hayek: A Collaborative Biography Part III Fraud, Fascism and Free Market Religion Robert Leeson Visiting Professor of Economics, Stanford University Selection and editorial matter © Robert Leeson 2014 Individual chapters © Contributors 2014 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-45241-2 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this w ork in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2014 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries ISBN 978-1-349-49739-3 ISBN 978-1-137-45242-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781137452429 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Contents Notes on Contributors vii Dramatis Personae v iii Part I Fraud 1 I ntroduction 3 R obert Leeson 2 H istory’s Greatest Fraud? 2 8 R obert Leeson 3 T he ‘Deacon’ McCormick Papers 7 1 I an Sayer 4 I nsights from one of ‘Deacon’ McCormick’s Research Assistants 7 3 N igel West Part II Victims 5 T he Triumph of Rhetoric: Pigou as Keynesian Whipping Boy and its Unintended Consequences 79 R obert Leeson and Daniel Schiffman 6 W ilfrid Noyce 1 27 S tewart Hawkins Part III Evidence 7 H ayek and ‘Deacon’ McCormick: Testing Austrian Knowledge 1 39 R obert Leeson 8 P rofessional Assessments 1 89 R obert Leeson 9 ‘ Deacon’ McCormick and the Madoc Myth 201 H oward Kimberley 10 A ssessing ‘Deacon’ McCormick from the Perspective of the Intelligence Community 214 D aniel Baldino v vi Contents 11 A uthoritative Sources: The Information Research Department, Journalism and Publishing 2 29 John Jenks 12 D onald McCormick: 2 + 2 = 5 236 R ichard B. Spence 13 T he Fake Hitler Diary 2 57 G erhard L. Weinberg 14 S ources and ‘The Use of Knowledge in Society’ 262 R obert Leeson Index 295 Notes on Contributors Daniel Baldino , Senior Lecturer in Politics, Notre Dame Australia University. Stewart Hawkins , Wilfrid Noyce’s biographer. John Jenks , Professor of Communication Arts & Sciences, Dominican University, USA. Howard Kimberley , a historian specializing in the history of Wales. Robert L eeson , Visiting Professor of Economics, Stanford University, and Adjunct Professor Notre Dame Australia University. Ian S ayer , the co-author (with Douglas Botting and The Sunday Times ) of Nazi Gold: The sensational story of the world’s greatest robbery – and the greatest criminal cover-up (2003). Daniel Schiffman , Senior Lecturer in Economics, Ariel University. Richard B. Spence , Professor of History, University of Idaho. Nigel W est , formerly one of Donald McCormick’s research assistants; the author of numerous books about the intelligence community. Gerhard L. Weinberg , William Rand Kenan, Jr., Professor Emeritus of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. vii Dramatis Personae The Fraud Naval Lieutenant Donald McCormick (1911–1998), aka Richard Deacon; free marketeer; Foreign Manager, T he Sunday Times . In The British Connection: Russia’s manipulation of british individuals and institutions (1979), he declared that A. C. Pigou was ‘an astonishingly deceptive char- acter who was to become certainly the most secret and in many respects one of the most effective Russian agents in fifty years’. In 1905, Pigou had published Principles and Methods of Industrial Peace; according to The British Connection, he had been simultaneously gun-running for Stalin. The Old Oswestrian ‘Deacon’ McCormick derived much of his ‘schol- arly’ information from the salacious British newspaper, T he News of the World , and rated the ‘British working classes as being about on a par with the lowest type of African tribe’. The philosophy of one of the protago- nists of his Taken for a Ride: The History of Cons and Con-men was: you can never cheat an honest man. A truly honest man would never have fallen for any of my schemes. I never fleeced anyone who could not afford my price for a lesson in honesty. The Fascist Lieutenant Ludwig ‘von’ Mises (1881–1973), free marketeer; aristocrat; Jewish-born atheist; employee of the Foundation for Economic Education; Austro-Fascist (V aterländische or Patriotic Front ) member no. 282632; Austro-Fascist social club ( Werk Neues Leben) member no. 406183; co-leader of the third-generation Austrian School of Economics, known to his disciples as ‘The Last Knight of Liberalism’. In his defining work, Liberalism in the classical tradition , he declared: It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civiliza- tion. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history. According to T he Last Knight of Liberalism , Mises was FEE’s ‘ spiritus rector ’ – literally: ‘Führer’ or ‘ruler’. viii Dramatis Personae ix The Promoter Lieutenant Friedrich ‘von’ Hayek, CH (1899–1992), free marketeer; aris- tocrat; atheist; grandson of a ‘naval dandy’; astonishingly deceptive character; paid promoter (via the ‘Moonie Nobel Prize’) of the Reverend Moon and a front organization of his Unification Church; defender of the ‘civilisation’ of apartheid from the American fashion of ‘human rights’; co-leader of the fourth-generation Austrian School of Economics; University of London Tooke Professor Economic Science and Statistics at the London School of Economics (1932–1950); Professor of Social and Moral Science at the University of Chicago (1950–1962); winner of the 1974 Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences for an apparently non-existent prediction of the Great Depression and for explaining (in ‘The Use of Knowledge in Society’) how markets ‘make full use of knowledge and information’. In 1984, after lunch at the Reform Club, Hayek promoted ‘Deacon’ McCormick, despite knowing that he may be sometime [ sic ] making things up. I suppose his exactitude is not that of a scholar, but of a journalist. But entirely honourable. The British Connection was, however, withdrawn by the publishers after just four days: Hayek – whose Nobel Lecture had addressed ‘The Pretence of Knowledge’ – planned to publicize ‘The Suppression of Information’, about Pigou’s communist activities, in the op-ed pages of The Times or E ncounter . Hayek told Arthur Seldon that his Institute of Economic Affairs was superior to the ‘propaganda’ emanating from the Foundation for Economic Education. The Source of the Pigou Story Richard Holmes (1912–?), retired sailor; bedsitland inhabitant in the north of England. He appears to have been afflicted by apophenia, a type of schizophrenia in which sufferers tend to extract abnormal mean- ingfulness from insignificant events. Hayek’s free marketeer ‘second hand dealers in ideas’ • Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001), public-stoning theocrat; Christian Reconstructionist; devotee of Cornelius Van Til.
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